Recommending Story-first games

[Impious Monk]

To return to the video Transcendent posted on LIs and romance mechanics: I really, really like the idea of ambiguous or 'hidden' or uncertain LIs... which might or might not develop into romances with the MC under certain obscure variables or conditions.

Romances like that are the most true to life ('what is that look she is giving me... what does it mean?') -- and could create fascinating alternative narrative strands.

Most players, of course, would hate LI mechanics like this -- but a don't see why you couldn't insert an alternative LI along these lines into a game with more conventional scripting for the main LI.

I agree. This type of interaction creates a more immersive experience, partly because in real life I don't always know the right thing to say to a woman.

I'm trying to pull this off to some extent with my main LI's. For example, with one LI there have been a handful of choices that (to some players) may look they wouldn't have any impact on the relationship with the LI. But if someone is considering what they know about that LI they could make a strong educated guess which choice the LI would find more attractive.

On the other hand, I've played too many games where I've felt that whether or not the LI likes my choice is a 50/50 crap shoot, so I may be in the same boat as those devs where I think I've given enough information to help the player make an informed choice but really I haven't.

As for adding alternative LI's to incorporate this feature, I agree with Noping that while BaD does a good job of adding side LI's, for most devs working on their games in their free time this can turn into a nightmare because of the extra work involved, particularly when incorporating the mechanics we are discussing here.

My outline did originally plan for a few of these women, and I even had one scene scripted and rendered in Part One of LDNA where the player meets one of these side/alternate women, but I ultimately scrapped the scene and the character. One problem is that each alternative path adds to the development time, particularly if a path will eventually lead to a lewd scene. But the bigger problem is finding a legitimate story purpose for the alternate LI paths. One of the recurring themes of this thread is that tighter pathing leads to stronger narratives, and it can be hard to justify including an alternative romance path in a story-first game if not taking that path won't take anything away from the main story.

(I ultimately did come up with a way to include lewd scenes with alternate women through my bonus Dream scenes, but this is cheating and doesn't provide the same satisfaction a player gets from romancing a woman through the story part of the game.)

 

[Vasin]

When it comes to realistic LI portrayal I think the most authentic way to do it is to have a behind the scenes scoring with low increment and a high total, so that you can have a lot of flavour choices for scoring and varying options being open to you based on your totals. Bonus complexity if there are multiple score dimensions. The problem is that it obviously requires a *lot* of writing and the game of that scope will probably be only able to support one potential romantic interest.

Interestingly, there is a game that is sort of like that, and I like it a lot. The reason I haven't mentioned it in this thread previously is because it's a sort of generic slice of life feel good story that doesn't necessarily *have* a larger plot, but what is there is written fairly well. It has a lot of cusomization to main LI that you can do via flavor choices but even there his core personality is still more or less set.

I'm kind of surprised there isn't more single LI stories, you'd think with them being easier to write they would be more popular, but I guess there's also a drawback of less characters spotlighting lower writing quality if that's a thing the writer is worried about.

 

[noping123]

I think Tonya in your game, Alive, is a pretty good example of an unexpected side character that only shows up if you do certain things. She is an interesting character even though I think MC should avoid her like the plague.

Hah.

Personally I don't feel like she fits that bill, although I can see the argument, but to me everything involving her is completely expected depending on the decisions you make, and it makes "guiding" yourself through her version of the story easy.... although that might just be complete bias since I know everything about the story/character, and you don't.

.... Ok the end of CH6 with her I can safely say no one should have expected. But besides that! (side note: it was a ton of fun creating that bit, particularly the MC's reaction to it. he's swiveling around ready to throw hands... what does he think he's going to punch!?)

I do agree the MC should avoid her like the plague - but well, if he doesn't, things get weird!

on a completely unrelated note, without fail every single time I see your name I misread it as "balaclava" and then "bienvinedo" and I don't know if I'm going to stop doing that any time soon.

 

[EndlessNights]

I sort of lost interest in the "main" story and main characters a while ago. At this point only one character is moderately interesting to me, the rest I sort of could care less about - and the "main" story just feels too paint-by-numbers at this point. That would be perfectly fine (just because its "paint-by-numbers", doesn't mean it's bad, some great stories can fit that formula) if it wasn't for the fact that its dragged on for SO LONG at this point.

But it's the side characters that actually keep me interested. The fact that you can A: reject all the main LI's if you choose, and B: the little hints of possibility with all these different side characters. (Along with some hints and all sorts of reasons that it won't happen).

I feel like DrPinkCake is just not that great at writing convincing romance. To me, his love stories tend to come across as rushed and shallow more often than not, and that's true for both Acting Lessons and BaDIK. His more offbeat, "anti-romance" romances tend to be better because they don't get too lovey dovey too quickly and it feels like the feelings between the characters are allowed to develop in a more natural way. I think Rena is the most interesting LI in Acting Lessons and Quinn is the most interesting in BaDIK though there are some incredibly good story reasons not to go with either one.

I've said this before, but I would love to see side characters in VNs get treated more often like love interests with less content rather than disposable sex objects. It would be great to see more quirky little endings where the MC does end up with one of the characters who received less of the spotlight during the game but who might have stolen the show at various moments. I would be totally happy with something simple like a shot of the wedding and some text explaining where the two end up. Devs don't always have to go all out to provide a satisfying conclusion.

 

[noping123]

I feel like DrPinkCake is just not that great at writing convincing romance. To me, his love stories tend to come across as rushed and shallow more often than not, and that's true for both Acting Lessons and BaDIK. His more offbeat, "anti-romance" romances tend to be better because they don't get too lovey dovey too quickly and it feels like the feelings between the characters are allowed to develop in a more natural way. I think Rena is the most interesting LI in Acting Lessons and Quinn is the most interesting in BaDIK though there are some incredibly good story reasons not to go with either one.

Rena was the one that I found most interesting in AL.... in bad it's Lily - although that might be very heavily because of how she ticks almost every single box. (Hey, I have a type. What can I say). But I particularly liked the way the most recent release ended if you went with her. It gave me very strong "this won't end well but go for it if you want!" vibes.

I've said this before, but I would love to see side characters in VNs get treated more often like love interests with less content rather than disposable sex objects. It would be great to see more quirky little endings where the MC does end up with one of the characters who received less of the spotlight during the game but who might have stolen the show at various moments. I would be totally happy with something simple like a shot of the wedding and some text explaining where the two end up. Devs don't always have to go all out to provide a satisfying conclusion.

I'm not saying you should play my game and follow tonyas path, because that definitely isn't something you should do.... but after my next release, it's probably something you should do.

 

[bacienvu88]

Hah.

Personally I don't feel like she fits that bill, although I can see the argument, but to me everything involving her is completely expected depending on the decisions you make, and it makes "guiding" yourself through her version of the story easy.... although that might just be complete bias since I know everything about the story/character, and you don't.

.... Ok the end of CH6 with her I can safely say no one should have expected. But besides that! (side note: it was a ton of fun creating that bit, particularly the MC's reaction to it. he's swiveling around ready to throw hands... what does he think he's going to punch!?)

I do agree the MC should avoid her like the plague - but well, if he doesn't, things get weird!

on a completely unrelated note, without fail every single time I see your name I misread it as "balaclava" and then "bienvinedo" and I don't know if I'm going to stop doing that any time soon.

The thing is, if you go to the club all days you are only going to see Tonya very briefly (something like 10 lines?). So, it is a bit unexpected to have a different character introduced when you don't go to the club. Especially since I first assumed that it would only mean to miss content if you choose for MC stays at home.

Yeah, my name here is a bit random.

 

[realjitter]

I dont remember that Tonya character all that well.... You tell her off once and never see her again. Well, not teling her off, but... So does she have like an actual story arc and all that? Does she also come to the beach house if you go her route?

 

[noping123]

I dont remember that Tonya character all that well.... You tell her off once and never see her again. Well, not teling her off, but... So does she have like an actual story arc and all that? Does she also come to the beach house if you go her route?

She doesn't join you at the beach house with everyone else, but... she definitely shows up!

But yes, she is relatively easy to "get rid of", and once you do she's pretty much gone for the remainder of the game, sans a possible quick cameo appearance.

 

[realjitter]

She doesn't join you at the beach house with everyone else, but... she definitely shows up!

Alright, that exclamation mark was enough of a tease for me to read it one more time i guess=)

 

[Hildegardt]

Imo the problem with choices that let the players "score" with specific LIs is that they most of the time distract from roleplaying as the PC. What a LI wants to hear becomes more important than what the player thinks the PC would say and the only thing keeping the player from choosing ooc is, if they picked a favourite LI beforehand and feel no need to min-max.
I think it's much more fun, when it feels like relationships form incidentally. One way to do that is to not have everything dependend on dialogue choices. Keeping track of choices outside of dialogue builds a personality profile for the PC that can be more or less compatible with specific LIs. This works especially well for games that follow a well thought out and branchy plot anyway.

A game in which the LI seemingly chooses itself would be pretty awesome.

 

[jufot]

A game in which the LI seemingly chooses itself would be pretty awesome.

I think that GDC talk from earlier explained it best. Let the player shape the MC's personality and interests, so the LI who is attracted to those chooses to come to the MC.

Or, in other words:

 

[EndlessNights]

Imo the problem with choices that let the players "score" with specific LIs is that they most of the time distract from roleplaying as the PC. What a LI wants to hear becomes more important than what the player thinks the PC would say and the only thing keeping the player from choosing ooc is, if they picked a favourite LI beforehand and feel no need to min-max.

Yeah, I always enjoy VNs more when I just immerse myself in the PC role and pick the choices I think he or she would have made regardless of the consequences. If the other characters like it or not, so be it. Ideally, by playing this way you'll be able to tell which LIs genuinely like the player character for who he or she is as a person. That's way more interesting than LIs who just respond to how the main character treats them independent of everything else.

The biggest obstacle to playing that way every time is that sometimes there are characters you really, really like that you don't want the PC to run the risk of alienating. Even in real life it's perfectly normal to want to please the people you like: you might talk about the things they want to talk about rather than what's really on your mind at that moment or watch the movie they want to see even if you're not that excited about it or just choose to emphasize or play down different aspects of your personality. Is it necessarily always min-maxing to want to pick the "right" choice to get closer to someone or is that just inevitably an aspect of human relationships?

I do think it makes perfect sense for the PC to get punished if he or she blatantly misrepresents themselves, lies, or otherwise practices deception in an attempt to get closer to another character or just not allow options like that in the first place if that's not the sort of person the PC is.

A game in which the LI seemingly chooses itself would be pretty awesome.

If the LI really does come across as the best fit for the MC, then definitely. I do still think it's best practice for the player to be able to affirm the PC has an interest in that LI rather than have them be automatically paired up. I didn't love how Acting Lessons goes about assigning the MC a girlfriend, for instance. Sure, the story would be much less dramatic if he didn't have a GF to possibly cheat on or had to choose which non-LI to save in an impossible situation, but it would also feel less forced.

 

[moskyx]

I'm not really sure I'm getting what you guys exactly want. As soon as your MC needs to tick certain boxes to be that "LI's LI", you are basically telling players to shape their MC that way if they want to succeed with that character, and the player's agency to behave as they'd wish is, again, lost (assuming they are interested in that exact LI, as I said). So it's just designing a path and making the LI available if some checkpoints are passed. It's like you're mixing storytelling with gamification, and basically you just wanted those elements to be properly designed and implemented so they don't feel clunky. When a game has a wide cast of LIs it's possible to make some of them available only if players shape their MC in a certain way: then, that MC's characterization becomes part of the gaming core mechanics. But other people will still demand every single LI in the game to fall for their MC no matter what, and some devs agree with this view: in this case, MC's characterization is just a cosmetic add-on. In the end, no matter the game's approach, in this thread we just expect that the way those LIs fall for the MC seems consistent enough with their own characterization. So it's all about dev's skills and game's design.

I remember a discussion I had with Tlaero back when she announced that, unlike previous games, Saving Chloe wouldn't have a scoring system but a branched narrative. I was a bit disappointed because, as much as I liked the stories, part of the fun was still the gaming part of them where you need to shape your answers and actions to what the LI expected from your MC, since failing to do so meant not getting the story's good ending. In short, players should play all those games in a certain way to get the girl, there was no 'agency' to be the man you'd wish to be, but there was 'fun' in finding the right approach. This was the usual challenge back then, and I used to find it real enough: despite the shortcomings of the scoring system ('oh, you didn't pass the checkpoint because you only said 3 nice things to her instead of 4'), I felt it somehow captured part of our behavior when we want to impress someone, acting the way we know she likes -of course, this only works in the long run if you actually are like you're acting. That's why I think is no wonder that Redemption for Jessika's game mechanics was the most acclaimed: unlike Elsa, who wanted a consistent guy she could know what to expect from (so players had to boringly pick the same type of answers again and again), Jessica wanted an all-around guy able to flirt, joke, or be romantic (and sexual) on any occasion, but not too sided to one of those traits. The way it was implemented allowed players to express themselves in a more natural way because we are not unidimensional beings, but it only worked that well because it used an extremely complex (for these games) math function to make it feel natural enough, and you could still fail if your characterization was not the perfect one: it was a defined and well-balanced path, but still a path, to get the game's only girl. So yeah, skills and design.

Then of course she knocked the ball out of the park with the 10 branches and 3 possible LIs in SC but those girls were already in love with Paul, no matter how he chose to answer he'd get the girl anyway as long as he made the right event-choices. In this case, the fun was to get the right combination of actions to open the desired path, and the players' agency regarding characterization didn't matter game-wise: LIs just act as if the way the player chose Paul to act was his usual self. And you guess what? I found it real too: sometimes people just get together because they spend so much time around each other that making a certain move at a key moment triggers everything you've been cooking up without even knowing it. And having 10 different paths to explore was enough to make us forget about the lack of impact of our characterization choices. So yeah, skills and design.

 

[Tlaero]

I Moskys so much! Aside from Mortze and I, I don't think there's anyone who knows my games as well as he does. Muchas gracias mi amigo.

Yeah, I've been reading these posts and thinking, "Cool, I did that in <this game>" etc. One advantage to writing a bunch of games is that it lets me try different gameplay techniques. As Moskys said, in the end, there's always a path to getting the LI. What you folks are really talking about is how well we developers hide the mechanics from the players.

And there's definitely a tradeoff with user choices. The shortest branch in Saving Chloe involves you choosing a secondary LI. I remember a player who just did that path and said, "I guess I'm done. Short game."

Tlaero

 

[ename144]

I feel like DrPinkCake is just not that great at writing convincing romance. To me, his love stories tend to come across as rushed and shallow more often than not, and that's true for both Acting Lessons and BaDIK. His more offbeat, "anti-romance" romances tend to be better because they don't get too lovey dovey too quickly and it feels like the feelings between the characters are allowed to develop in a more natural way. I think Rena is the most interesting LI in Acting Lessons and Quinn is the most interesting in BaDIK though there are some incredibly good story reasons not to go with either one.

I may just have simple tastes, but I generally like DPC's romances, at least on paper. Where I think he drops the ball is developing them once the romance is begun. Acting Lessons hid the problem in a... smokescreen, and BaDIK has been stalling for the last 5 episodes to keep the relationships malleable enough they can still be reworked down the line.

I think the core problem is that for all DPC's skills as a writer he's not all that good a storyteller. AL infamously switched stories in the final act, BaDIK's story is too short for the gameplay DPC wanted it to fill. The romances get bent out of shape as the story is manhandled around them, whereas the side-girls are small enough to fit in neatly. Which is a shame, because DPC is very good at making vibrant characters and excellent dialog, so I really WANT the main romances to succeed. But it's not looking very promising at the moment.

I've said this before, but I would love to see side characters in VNs get treated more often like love interests with less content rather than disposable sex objects. It would be great to see more quirky little endings where the MC does end up with one of the characters who received less of the spotlight during the game but who might have stolen the show at various moments. I would be totally happy with something simple like a shot of the wedding and some text explaining where the two end up. Devs don't always have to go all out to provide a satisfying conclusion.

I don't know, isn't that effectively promoting a side girl to main girl status? Even if the ending is short, they're no longer a side piece if we can ride off into the sunset with them. We'd all like that in an ideal world, but the time and resources have to come from somewhere. I thought it was a crying shame Emma didn't get a proper ending in Become a Rock Star, but is it fair to ask the rest of the fans to wait yet another month (or more!) just to give her some closure?

I think at a certain point the dev has to be able to say enough is enough. Not all games need side girls, but they can be a fun or useful tool to explore certain scenarios without having to add a whole new LI to the game. It sucks when the side girls winds up being our favorite, but thems the risks.

Yeah, I always enjoy VNs more when I just immerse myself in the PC role and pick the choices I think he or she would have made regardless of the consequences. If the other characters like it or not, so be it. Ideally, by playing this way you'll be able to tell which LIs genuinely like the player character for who he or she is as a person. That's way more interesting than LIs who just respond to how the main character treats them independent of everything else.

The biggest obstacle to playing that way every time is that sometimes there are characters you really, really like that you don't want the PC to run the risk of alienating. Even in real life it's perfectly normal to want to please the people you like: you might talk about the things they want to talk about rather than what's really on your mind at that moment or watch the movie they want to see even if you're not that excited about it or just choose to emphasize or play down different aspects of your personality. Is it necessarily always min-maxing to want to pick the "right" choice to get closer to someone or is that just inevitably an aspect of human relationships?

I do think it makes perfect sense for the PC to get punished if he or she blatantly misrepresents themselves, lies, or otherwise practices deception in an attempt to get closer to another character or just not allow options like that in the first place if that's not the sort of person the PC is.

Hear hear! I agree entirely.

If the LI really does come across as the best fit for the MC, then definitely. I do still think it's best practice for the player to be able to affirm the PC has an interest in that LI rather than have them be automatically paired up. I didn't love how Acting Lessons goes about assigning the MC a girlfriend, for instance. Sure, the story would be much less dramatic if he didn't have a GF to possibly cheat on or had to choose which non-LI to save in an impossible situation, but it would also feel less forced.

I agree even more strongly here!

In fact, I think the AL example is illustrative, because if DPC had spent more time considering how his twist might land when we weren't playing the game in harem mode he might have done a much better job setting up and delivering that twist in the first place. Conversely, even though A Summer's End was all about hooking up with Sam, I still think the game would have been much weaker if it didn't let us see what happened should we ultimately reject her.

 

[ename144]

I'm not really sure I'm getting what you guys exactly want. As soon as your MC needs to tick certain boxes to be that "LI's LI", you are basically telling players to shape their MC that way if they want to succeed with that character, and the player's agency to behave as they'd wish is, again, lost (assuming they are interested in that exact LI, as I said). So it's just designing a path and making the LI available if some checkpoints are passed. It's like you're mixing storytelling with gamification, and basically you just wanted those elements to be properly designed and implemented so they don't feel clunky. When a game has a wide cast of LIs it's possible to make some of them available only if players shape their MC in a certain way: then, that MC's characterization becomes part of the gaming core mechanics. But other people will still demand every single LI in the game to fall for their MC no matter what, and some devs agree with this view: in this case, MC's characterization is just a cosmetic add-on. In the end, no matter the game's approach, in this thread we just expect that the way those LIs fall for the MC seems consistent enough with their own characterization. So it's all about dev's skills and game's design.

I remember a discussion I had with Tlaero back when she announced that, unlike previous games, Saving Chloe wouldn't have a scoring system but a branched narrative. I was a bit disappointed because, as much as I liked the stories, part of the fun was still the gaming part of them where you need to shape your answers and actions to what the LI expected from your MC, since failing to do so meant not getting the story's good ending. In short, players should play all those games in a certain way to get the girl, there was no 'agency' to be the man you'd wish to be, but there was 'fun' in finding the right approach. This was the usual challenge back then, and I used to find it real enough: despite the shortcomings of the scoring system ('oh, you didn't pass the checkpoint because you only said 3 nice things to her instead of 4'), I felt it somehow captured part of our behavior when we want to impress someone, acting the way we know she likes -of course, this only works in the long run if you actually are like you're acting. That's why I think is no wonder that Redemption for Jessika's game mechanics was the most acclaimed: unlike Elsa, who wanted a consistent guy she could know what to expect from (so players had to boringly pick the same type of answers again and again), Jessica wanted an all-around guy able to flirt, joke, or be romantic (and sexual) on any occasion, but not too sided to one of those traits. The way it was implemented allowed players to express themselves in a more natural way because we are not unidimensional beings, but it only worked that well because it used an extremely complex (for these games) math function to make it feel natural enough, and you could still fail if your characterization was not the perfect one: it was a defined and well-balanced path, but still a path, to get the game's only girl. So yeah, skills and design.

Then of course she knocked the ball out of the park with the 10 branches and 3 possible LIs in SC but those girls were already in love with Paul, no matter how he chose to answer he'd get the girl anyway as long as he made the right event-choices. In this case, the fun was to get the right combination of actions to open the desired path, and the players' agency regarding characterization didn't matter game-wise: LIs just act as if the way the player chose Paul to act was his usual self. And you guess what? I found it real too: sometimes people just get together because they spend so much time around each other that making a certain move at a key moment triggers everything you've been cooking up without even knowing it. And having 10 different paths to explore was enough to make us forget about the lack of impact of our characterization choices. So yeah, skills and design.

I agree with your broader point, but things differ in the weeds. I liked Redemption for Jessika, because as you said, the game did a good job matching the gameplay to an interesting path to win Jessica's affection. I'm lukewarm on Saving Chloe because while all the various paths are interesting to a certain extent, they're so utterly divorced from each other they might as well be separate games. IMHO it's hard to believe the same characters can wind up in such divergent places through the tiniest of perturbations.

Basically, I think it works best when the choices we make are used to define who the MC is as a person and the LIs (and other characters) will then respond to that person appropriately, but you can't give *too* much weight to any one choice (no matter how significant it is).

I Moskys so much! Aside from Mortze and I, I don't think there's anyone who knows my games as well as he does. Muchas gracias mi amigo.

Yeah, I've been reading these posts and thinking, "Cool, I did that in <this game>" etc. One advantage to writing a bunch of games is that it lets me try different gameplay techniques. As Moskys said, in the end, there's always a path to getting the LI. What you folks are really talking about is how well we developers hide the mechanics from the players.

And there's definitely a tradeoff with user choices. The shortest branch in Saving Chloe involves you choosing a secondary LI. I remember a player who just did that path and said, "I guess I'm done. Short game."

Tlaero

Heh, I resemble that remark! (I did recognize why the game was so short, but as I mentioned above, the feeling didn't entirely go away even after I saw the other endings.)

 

[EndlessNights]

I may just have simple tastes, but I generally like DPC's romances, at least on paper. Where I think he drops the ball is developing them once the romance is begun. Acting Lessons hid the problem in a... smokescreen, and BaDIK has been stalling for the last 5 episodes to keep the relationships malleable enough they can still be reworked down the line.

Perhaps this is a more subjective perception than I think it is, but I usually don't get the feeling there is any deep emotional connection between DPC's characters. It's not there in the falling in love stage or once the relationship has begun. There are moments when characters in BaDIK confide in the MC, showing that they trust him even with their deepest secrets, and he generally reacts appropriately enough on those occasions...but I don't get the sense even then that the relationship has reached a new level and that they truly understand each other and feel each other's emotions. Part of the problem as you said is undoubtedly the malleability of the relationships -- the story has to be able to accommodate both the MC being passionately devoted to his one true love (or two true loves) and the scenario where he is cheating left and right at every opportunity. Also, in DPC's world I think drama often tends to overwhelm love...hopefully that won't be the case at the end of BaDIK, but I'm not entirely confident.

In DPC's defense, I should say that emotional intimacy is one of the toughest things for a writer to depict even though Tlaero makes it look effortless a lot of the time.

I think the core problem is that for all DPC's skills as a writer he's not all that good a storyteller. AL infamously switched stories in the final act, BaDIK's story is too short for the gameplay DPC wanted it to fill. The romances get bent out of shape as the story is manhandled around them, whereas the side-girls are small enough to fit in neatly. Which is a shame, because DPC is very good at making vibrant characters and excellent dialog, so I really WANT the main romances to succeed. But it's not looking very promising at the moment.

These are all excellent points and I totally agree. I do really like a lot of DPC's characters; they tend to be very easy to root for and fun to spend time with. I still want to see them overcome their problems and find their happy endings even if the romance feels a little lackluster.

 

[desmosome]

Perhaps this is a more subjective perception than I think it is, but I usually don't get the feeling there is any deep emotional connection between DPC's characters. It's not there in the falling in love stage or once the relationship has begun. There are moments when characters in BaDIK confide in the MC, showing that they trust him even with their deepest secrets, and he generally reacts appropriately enough on those occasions...but I don't get the sense even then that the relationship has reached a new level and that they truly understand each other and feel each other's emotions. Part of the problem as you said is undoubtedly the malleability of the relationships -- the story has to be able to accommodate both the MC being passionately devoted to his one true love (or two true loves) and the scenario where he is cheating left and right at every opportunity. Also, in DPC's world I think drama often tends to overwhelm love...hopefully that won't be the case at the end of BaDIK, but I'm not entirely confident.

In DPC's defense, I should say that emotional intimacy is one of the toughest things for a writer to depict even though Tlaero makes it look effortless a lot of the time.



These are all excellent points and I totally agree. I do really like a lot of DPC's characters; they tend to be very easy to root for and fun to spend time with. I still want to see them overcome their problems and find their happy endings even if the romance feels a little lackluster.

What about Acting Lessons? With a smaller cast, I think it was done pretty well? It's been way too long to remember anything concrete, but I thought there was some genuine stuff there, and I still do hold it in high regard. BaDIK, I kinda lost interest quite a while ago and stopped playing it.

 

[Dragon59]

Don't play my game if all you want is a fap and GO! AHHHH!

Thank you for letting me vent, this felt like a good place to do it, because you guys are not here only for a wank!

With a declaration like that, I have to download and play the game.

I share your sentiment, by the way. The games I'm working on are more about story. At least that is my intent.

Do share your opinions if you end up trying them! I'm a he, by the way.

No one asked, but I think it will have an influence on my writing. I'm a he, but I consider myself a bit gender non-conforming.

To return to the video Transcendent posted on LIs and romance mechanics: I really, really like the idea of ambiguous or 'hidden' or uncertain LIs... which might or might not develop into romances with the MC under certain obscure variables or conditions.

Romances like that are the most true to life ('what is that look she is giving me... what does it mean?') -- and could create fascinating alternative narrative strands.

Most players, of course, would hate LI mechanics like this -- but a don't see why you couldn't insert an alternative LI along these lines into a game with more conventional scripting for the main LI.

The main thing for me is that I find myself writing like it is a standard story, not a choose your own adventure. I need to frequently remind myself to include meaningful choices. My first choice was "do you want me to get you another coffee?" Not a meaningful choice as it only affected the next few renders.

 

[bacienvu88]

Imo the problem with choices that let the players "score" with specific LIs is that they most of the time distract from roleplaying as the PC. What a LI wants to hear becomes more important than what the player thinks the PC would say and the only thing keeping the player from choosing ooc is, if they picked a favourite LI beforehand and feel no need to min-max.

I think the problem stems from that the vast majority of the choices we get aren't about the MC at all, they are only about what the LIs want and what the player wants. Any roleplaying you get are incidental. If a choice boils down to "LP+1, yes or no?" or "follow this LI's path, yes or no?" or similar, the choice isn't about the MC. What you shape as a player isn't about the MC's personality, it is about what LIs they persue. If we want roleplaying, the choices you make must affect the MC as well.

For example, if you have the classic scenario with two LIs and they ask which of them is prettiest you get the choices "choose LI A", "choose LI B", "can't choose / choose both". In order to affect the MC you can add an indecisive trait to them if you choose the "both" option. And this will affect interactions later on. And may even cause you to lose LIs in extreme case as they both leave if you are unable to choose between them.

Another key is to have the player choose the preferences of the MC before they actually matter. For example, scenario where you and LI are choosing where to go on a date, LI expresses their opinion, then you get to choose between LIs option or one of your own. Instead of that you can have the MC daydream about his ideal date when he is at work and the player gets to choose some scenario. If MC's choice matches the one of the LI, the date becomes perfect. If it doesn't MC have a choice to accomodate the LI or assert his own opinion (which may add those traits to MC as well). And regardless of choice it becomes harder to have a successful date.